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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Vegan Fail

I love Korean food. The do it yourself bbq meat, the perfect combination of spicy and tart pickled vegetables, the fact that they aren't afraid to throw a raw egg into a scalding hot bowl of rice, that it satisfies almost every usual craving of mine in one fell swoop. Prior to the vegan challenge I made a Korean dinner part of my last hurrah, as it's one cuisine I'll definitely miss especially working so close to New York's Little Korea, and immediately began thinking of ways to incorporate the cuisine as much as possible into my challenge.

Enter Mother In Law's Kimchi. In my mad dash Wednesday night to Whole Foods, I stood gaping openly at the soy-Asian refrigerated section and when I saw this innocent little jar of kimchi, complete with the design friendly label, it was an immediate grab. Of course I didn't read the ingredients. It's kimchi. It's spicy, tart, fermented. At worse as far as meat of any sort goes there's shrimp paste, fish sauce and/or anchovies.

But this particular jar? Oh no. Thanks to a conversation about kimchi yesterday with Miss Le Creusette that led me to this link, only then did I realize that my unoffensive little jar was actually chock full of beef stock. I legitimately ask... is this typical to kimchi? All the other brands in that taste test don't have any, but should I feel silly for not immediately checking the ingredient list? And as you can see from the picture above I've definitely been snacking away at it for the past few days. Once again, I'm sticking to my guns and not beating myself up or making myself feel bad. That's the opposite point of this challenge. I've simply made note of all the other delicious and pesca vegan friendly kimchi's available, and this one will just continue to ferment away in the back of my fridge for the next 30 something days.